BAGUIO CITY – Now that the holidays are over, we can brace for sobering news from the ashes and debris of our festivities.
Santiago Baconguis, chief science research specialist of the Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau, said two million trees in the Philippines were sacrificed for the Yuletide season.
He said barbeques, lechon, puto bumbong and bonfires are cherished Christmas traditions but they are putting a strain on our already frail ecosystem because they all use charcoal, he said.
This does not include the trees cut up for Christmas trees.
Baconguis said almost one million hectares of forest had been used up for charcoal from 1984 to 1995.
“From 1984 to 1995, we may have already used up 3 million hectares,” he said.
He said that the fuel wood, or charcoal, consumption of the Philippines is from 25 to 29 million tons.
But because these are long-held traditions, these would not be outlawed so easily.
ERDC is offering a better alternative: charcoal briquetting.
Baconguis, who also heads the DENR Garcoal task Force, said that they have so far come up with tried-and-tested ingredients as well as new materials for briquetting.
Briquetting means chopping and then carbonizing the biomass and then, with a binder like cassava paste, pressing the mixture in a briquettor.
The ERDC have also recently perfected a fast carbonizer which turns biomass into chipped charcoal from the usual six to seven minutes to one minute.
The ERDB had been experimenting on jatropha waste and even pineapple leaves for charcoal briquetting. The jatropha waste left after the oil had been pressed is capable of heating to 10,000 British Thermal Unit, which is more than enough as a charcoal substitute.
The best so far, according to Baconguis, is cogon which can heat up to 14,000 BTU, coco husk with heating value of 12,000 BTU and bamboo with 11,000 BTU. The average range for cooking is 7,000 BTU.
According to Baconguis, other materials with good BTU are sawdust (10,300 BTU), corn cob (13,300 BTU), peanut shell charcoal (11,000) and even rice hull (5,717).
ERDB have also experimented on using combination of biomass like cocoshell, coffee, mahogany, cogon and gmelina (10,000 BTU), ipil-ipil twigs and gmelina leaves (8,900 BTU), gmelina, narra twigs and kakawate (8,627 BTU).
The ERDB had been experimenting on at least 30 species of wood and nonwood biomass.
ERDB is offering charcoal briquetting as a profitable way for managing solid waste. They were part of the training for the Integrated Solid Waste Management for municipalities set up by the Mayors Development Center of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines and two German NGOs, the Hanns Siedel Foundation and the German Technical Cooperation.
Frank Cimatu, Inquirer Northern Luzon
